


The Color of Auras

by brokenmemento



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 21:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15916731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Through life and death, the color of our souls shows through to the world. This is a lesson on what it means to live, love, and lose.





	The Color of Auras

“Have you ever lost anyone?” Said into the evening, wind and surf batting it back to Grace's ears.

She scoffs and glances over at Frankie who squints into the setting sun. “Of course I have. What kind of question is that?”

“I don’t see it in you though, so I thought I’d ask,” Frankie frowns.

There’s a lot of loss a person can experience. Death, moving, going down separate paths. Her life is littered with the remnants of things and people from yesteryear. Frankie knows about many of them, so the question seems inane.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Grace asks and weirdly wants to know. Because now, everything feels weird to want where Frankie is concerned. Their relationship is no longer about surviving the other. 

“There’s a part of you that goes black when someone dies,” she says. “Like turning off a light.”

“What?” It comes out as lost as her brain is in this haze of trying to figure out the direction of their conversation.

“We are all filled with color, so much of it, swirling around and making auras and whatnot. When you lose someone, it takes the color away. Like it was never there in the first place.” Frankie looks out across the horizon. The sea tickles her toes and they curl a little in the surf.

Grace thinks about this, really thinks, because the earth is alive tonight and so are they, despite the conversation about the opposite. Babe might be gone and in a place Grace is pretty sure she believes in and Frankie’s distorted concept doesn’t match, but that doesn’t mean she can’t walk a little on this road. Indulge Frankie a bit. The sun dips low, as low as Grace’s spirit almost, and she feels the years too acutely in her bones. 

“She was full of color,” said wistfully against the breeze, carried off to some distant place to join Babe’s ashes. “So many blues, violets. Lavender.”

“I’m sure that means...something,” Grace sighs as the wind kicks up, sending her hair tickling the expanse of her jawline.

Frankie turns as she brushes the hair away and stares that unnerving stare Grace has seen too often lately, had seen across the room a few short weeks ago. It’s the one that she tried to ignore through tears and with a jutting chin to counteract the life and death and sadness and merriment of a room full of bodies living while one was wanting to rest eternally.

The familiar creep begins again, of something changing shape and being a little less of what it used to be. Of things unfurling and growing and Grace can think of nothing but climbing fences and wrapping around wood and stone. To have something sturdy to lean your back against while eating light and rain, only concerned with blooming beautifully.

“It means that she was a good one and the world is a missing her tonight. Not just us,” Frankie exhales, like she’s speaking it to make it so.

Grace writes Babe’s name in the sand, looks at it in her looping script. She lets another sigh escape her as she thinks about the thin line between vitality and mortality. A line drawn too, in the sand, that’s maybe a metaphor and maybe not so much, if the universe does read signs like Frankie claims it does.

And while Grace doesn’t really subscribe to the same set of convictions as Frankie, she finds herself agreeing and wanting for maybe the hundredth time since Frankie decided to make her feel. “I don’t want a dark aura,” she flings into the air like it is nothing, like it weighs little and is as light as a feather in her chest.

The hand fidgeting in the sand is slowed of its movement when soft skin connects and Grace feels everything tighten. It’s hard and why, _ oh why _ , does it have to be? Why can’t static things be left static? Why must dynamic things insist upon changing everything they touch?

“Do want to know your colors?” Frankie asks. Amusement tight within the words, but also something else Grace can’t quite peg, just like the woman herself. As she asks, she’s still tracing the contours of Grace’s hand, learning the bends and arches of her fingers it seems. For what reason, Grace doesn’t know.

“Do I?” is all Grace can think to say, admitting she wants to know harder than almost anything. The hand on her, still moving. Still taking everything in.

“You’re a mix of orange and yellow when you talk to Brianna about Say Grace. You slip inside of that color so easily, as if you never even left it,” Frankie begins. The slight tickle as Frankie grazes the inside of her wrist sends a shiver up and down Grace’s spine. “With your…gentlemen callers, red, of course. Like there would ever be any color other than bright and blazing.”

Something on Frankie turns inward then, Grace almost too busy wondering what oranges and reds mean to catch the wash of emotion over Frankie. “Lately, sometimes, it’s like a cloudy mud puddle surrounding you. Like you’re hiding yourself away from the world.”

Grace doesn’t have to know specifics to know that brown isn’t good, that it isn’t a color she should have her aura be. This bothers her more than it should and Frankie tilts her head a bit, imagined telepathy not seeming as farfetched. Grace wonders if all around her, there’s a swirl of seeming indifference, despite caring more than she can ever express.

“You find it hard to let go,” Frankie murmurs and it’s meant to be a jab at the sticky residue from Phil. “You stay too locked down. They may think they’re getting you, Grace, but they never do. You keep the best of you for yourself.”

Grace wants to protest, but there’s too much happening at once. Her eyes burn from looking too long at the sun, her skin burns where Frankie touches her, her heart burns because it does feel, no matter what anyone says. And while she knows she will never be Babe, she finds herself needing more.

“I’ve been alone my entire life,” she offers by way of explanation. “Even when I had Robert, I was alone really. And who wants to go through life alone?” The last part slips out, an accidental muttering of an old woman losing days and inching closer toward the end, the one she’d claw to get away from if it would help. The one Babe accepted with open arms.

“You don’t have to anymore.” Soft. Comfortable, if Grace would let it be. Suddenly she feels like she’s sinking through the sand and twilight will unravel her. But it’s just Frankie unwrapping her piece by piece. How much longer until she’s exposed?

They’ve got a week until Frankie’s art show because it’s really a showing for Grace too, isn’t it? After so long of Grace aching inside and Frankie letting her elation and sorrow tinge canvases with things too big for the world to hold as they happen apparently. The world will see the paintings and Frankie’s will show them all her version of Grace, with fangs and drink poised. Recognition begins to seep in and Grace understands how deep color must run.

The connection with their hands feels like so much more, as do Frankie’s words, and Grace decides that darks and mud puddles aren’t something she wants to have hanging around. Even if she doesn’t see them herself, it seems unfair to subject Frankie to staring at hers when it’s not aesthetically pleasing.

“Tell me how to change my color,” Grace whispers and the sound of the waves almost covers up the demand. She chances a glance in Frankie’s direction and is startled to see her leaning slowly forward, closing the gap between them on the beach. A spike of fear and anticipation lances through Grace hard as Frankie closes her eyes.

She knows she’s supposed to stay stationary, to not move and let whatever is about to happen take form. Of course though, she doesn’t. Of course she deviates from the expectation and moves her head just a fraction. This causes the trajectory of Frankie’s lips to wind up at the corner of Grace’s own mouth, slightly touching. Grace herself, barely breathing.

Immediately, she feels a pang of desire rise. Maybe not so much the kind of desire tied to physicality but the kind that begs to be touched and remembered. The simple desire of wanting to be not just noticed, but seen.

Grace feels Frankie and it’d be a millimeter more to a path she’s finding she wants to trek, to make a journey with eyes closed and heart open. Before she can let inception become reality, Frankie backs away with eyes closed and a smile on her lips. Her heart flutters then wants again. A thing not on short supply lately.

“What?” Grace asks, the question that took them down this rabbit hole emerging forth again.

Frankie opens her eyes and the smile doesn’t remove itself from her face. “Blue,” she sighs. Her voice as serene as her face. “Grace, you’re changing and you don’t even know it. I wish you could see you like I do.”

The world is bent inward now, more concave than it was before. There’s the before with a Grace who hadn’t felt the curvature of Frankie’s lips and there’s the after, the forever changed version of herself that isn’t the color of the earth. The one who has blue circling around her, a blue that Frankie can see, and for a moment, Grace feels nothing but happy.

“She must have seen it in you too,” Frankie nods. “I was given specific instructions to be nice to you.” Her lips twitch and she squints her eyes against the dying sun once more.

_ So being nice requires you kissing me _ ? Grace wants to say. Which never would have happened if she’d been okay with what she is instead of what she could be. Wanting to be teal or cerulean or any shade of the sort seems counter to the normal definition of the term.

“Were you now?”

“Trust me, you’ve made it difficult,” Frankie says in a tone that cuts, but not on purpose. Reference to recent events, no doubt.

“Yeah, I know,” Grace nods and looks down into the sand. The water has etched away Babe’s name as if it were never there. Life continuing on, ebbing and flowing. She reaches for Frankie’s hand again, grips it tightly. “Teach me to be all the colors,” she says into the dying light.

Frankie answers with a squeeze of her own.


End file.
